Don't Tell Me Goodnight
by badacts
Summary: We are all black-hearted and have bruised egos, but we still know how to break. E/A.


**_So, this is pretty much the most self-indulgent thing ever. This is where I pretend that I like to write prose, rather than plotty stories in excess of 100K words because I am completely insane. Heh._**

_**Also, this is inspired by the heart-breaking picture **boy who blocked his own shot** by loobeeinthesky/seiko-assassin (DA). Seriously, guys, look her up and give her love, because she is amazing and that pic made me all EMOTIONAL. WHAT. Not that she knows about this because she'. Yeah. But seriously, if you haven't seen it, look it up.**_

**_Happy Valentine's Day! Have some angst!_**

**_Word Count: ~1500_**

**_Genre: Darkfic/angst/tragedy_**

**_Warnings: slash, major character death._**

**_Pairing: A/E (one day, I will write another pairing in this fandom. NOT TODAY THOUGH.)_**

**_Rating: T_**

**_Disclaimer: Ain't mine._**

**

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DON'T TELL ME GOODNIGHT**

**BadActs**

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YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT DREAMING IS?**_

_**

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Darling…**_

The word, a breathe of air that Arthur can taste but can't quite catch, the tears on his face and the sob tearing halfway down his throat. The others are somewhere, somewhere close, lost within the falling silence.

He holds the flutter of eyes and heart, soft through the base of his thumb, all within the twin cups of his palms, and he knows full well that they will run through his fingers like water.

If this was a dream, he could kill the both of them and come awake on the surface, left only with phantom pain and tearing, pounding hearts.

It's not a dream.

He doesn't need to roll his dice to know that. The feel of blood soaking the knees of his second-favourite suit, the dimming smell of gunpowder – it's enough. Enough to know that this is reality, where death is an end and not just a tool.

_**Go to sleep, Mr. Eames.**_

And he breathes out and breathes out and breathes out, and Arthur thinks, _no_. He thinks a long litany of negatives that he can't choke down, because this can't be happening. This _cannot be happening._

He isn't sure that he knows how to let go.

_**

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WE CLOSED OUR EYES AND SWORE WE'D KEEP BREATHING**_

* * *

They finally stop circling each other in the flush of success after they achieve inception. Arthur has expected it, to some extent: being in such proximity while they prepared for the job had made him feel as though they were two planets caught in each other's gravity, circling and circling until they finally collide.

He hadn't expected the impact to be quite so welcome, though. He's spent so long holding back that he'd thought it'd be a fight to the bitter end, but it's not. Eames is worn from the stress of it, some of his boundless energy finally sapped from his bones, and he's easier for the lack of it. Arthur, because the two of them always have to be different – they just _are_ – is electrified by their accomplishments. Now that Cobb is safe, he can pour his focus into other things, the things he has set aside over the last eighteen months.

One of those things is definitely Eames. Eames, who has been his sole point of steady contact when even he couldn't afford to stay still. Eames, who had said _**call me, and I'll come **_when he'd heard about Mal. Eames, who Arthur can trust more than Cobb any day, despite the differences in the two men.

Arthur is loyal. He's loyal, and Dom's betrayal isn't something that he can forgive right away. Perhaps not ever.

So he and Eames crash together in LA, and again in Milan, and then they both go Kyoto for a job. It's nice, to share a bed with someone who you know and trust. It's nice, and horrible, and the best thing that has ever happened to Arthur, all in one.

It's nice, because Arthur has missed feeling at home like this. Even as they travel, he has something unshakeable that he can reach out and touch, use to steady himself in the moments where he rocks and wonders whether he can keep his feet. It's better than that for reasons he doesn't like to think about much. Belonging is one thing – reliance is another entirely.

Arthur doesn't think he has ever been in love. He had thought, once, that Mal and Dom had put him off the idea for life. Since then he has discovered that it's not the kind of thing you choose. It's certainly not what you would choose, if you could, either.

And that's why it's horrible. Arthur hurts with the weight of this thing between them, carries it like lead over his shoulders and light in his chest in one. Either way, the sheer size of it is crushing.

Arthur has never been so frightened in his life.

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YOUR TOUCH IS A SOFT SHOCK**_

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Eames, when Arthur arrives at the hospital on Boxing Day, looks the worst he has ever seen him – lips white and pressed thin, jaw locked tight, eyes too frantic for him to be medicated but not really conscious, either.

_**He won't take morphine**_, the nurses had told him when he'd come in. Eames's main caretaker had looked worn with the hours of the night-shift, and she hadn't mentioned once the fact that Arthur shouldn't really be here at all.

_**He's afraid**_, Arthur had replied calmly. Somehow, this had been soothing for the nurse: apparently fear is easier to deal with than sheer bloody-mindedness. Arthur, knowing more than his fair share of stubborn people, knows the feeling.

_**Hey**_, Arthur greets, his voice gentle as he knows how. _**Asshole. You're meant to be resting.**_

Eames wheezes out a painful laugh. _**I'm lying around in bed, aren't I?**_

_**Not the same thing,**_ Arthur replies, taking a seat and liberating the morphine button from Eames's unresisting fingers. _**Let me. Sleep.**_

_**Will you stay?**_ He asks, and his voice is already blurring, before Arthur even pushes the button. He blinks once, slow.

_**Of course**_, Arthur murmurs back, steady as a heartbeat, steady as he always is. He brushes Eames's hair back from his forehead with his little finger, easy. _**Go to sleep**_.

And Eames does.

_**

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THE MIGHTY SOUL IS A MYSTERY TO ME**_

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Arthur's first opinion of Eames is that the forger is an immature, slightly sleazy trickster who isn't nearly as stupid as he acts. And Arthur is right.

However, Eames also appears to be force and power packed into a human body. It's not like he's tall, although he is broad – far stronger than Arthur. The thing is, all of his movements seem to be rife with control, like he has had to pare them down to be acceptable, like he might explode if he loses the hold he has over all the energy pounding through his veins.

He never stops moving. Arthur - still, quiet Arthur who doesn't need to control himself because he just _is_, his blood running cooler than anyone else's - has never wanted someone so much in his entire life.

All this in the first half-hour they know each other, before Arthur even knows that the man is good at his job. But Cobb and Mal come up from their dream with him wide-eyed in wonder, saying he's the best they've ever seen, and when Arthur makes a sceptical face they tell him he must go under with Eames.

When they sit down across from each other, Eames is wearing a hideously smug smirk that almost disguises the sharpness of his eyes. Under his ill-fitting clothes and heavy build lurks a blade of a man, his intellect as whip-like as Arthur's.

_**So sceptical, darling, **_he says, and his voice is warm and soothing like _Arthur_ is the one who might bite. And Arthur supposes he might be an asshole, but there's no need for Eames to _handle _him.

_**It's my job**_, Arthur replies, snappish and with the edge of a smirk. _**Just go to sleep, Mr Eames**_.

And if his eyes say the same things that he can read right off of Eames' face, then he can already see into their future. Where Eames is bright, too bright and too beautiful to be contained, and where Arthur can't really afford what the man will cost him, but will try to anyway.

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WEAR YOUR BRUISES, PROUD**_

_**

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Security's going to run you down hard**_, Eames says, with the nonchalant air of a man who has spent a large portion of his life running. Arthur pushes his fingers out of the way so that he can insert the cannula into the forger's vein, careful and easy. And Eames might _sound_ nonchalant, but Arthur can feel his heartbeat too quick even in the instant they are touching.

Yeah, and Arthur knows the feeling, which is why his reply is just as flippant. _**And I will lead them in a merry chase**__. _His tone is almost casual, with the flourish that suggests that Arthur is laughing at the both of them. And actually, he is. If they achieve this, they set themselves up as gods. If they die, then they are all done for, here and now.

It's the way the both of them prefer to work. Work _and_ play, actually, and it's not and kind of irony Arthur is feeling, just desperation and amusement in one.

Eames smiles up at him as he leans back, and there is a flash of something dark in his pale eyes. Arthur knows the taste of that darkness from the snow-heavy forests of Canada, the humidity of Singapore, everywhere the two of them have ever locked gazes. The forger says, _**just be back before the kick**_, with a desert's worth of heat in his gaze.

_**Go to sleep, Mr. Eames.**_ And Arthur can't help the pull of a smile that feels like falling, feels like the muzzle of a gun pressed to his throat, feels like hitting the ground and coming awake with a gasp.

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**_BadActs_**


End file.
